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Hello member of TFF. I finally got a chance to really dig (sort of pun intended) into some matrix I bought back in December of 2013 from I believe tj102569 (but it's been so long I cannot find the sale post anymore).
If I remember correctly the matrix was from a quarry in possibly Grant county South Dakota. But it was definitely from a quarry in South Dakota (yeah I know there are more than one). The matrix is pretty hard. Engraver and dental pick don't do much more than scratch the stuff. The seller at the time said he used a hammer to just break it open and find sharks teeth. But I was after large and micro fossils so I didn't like that path. I started to use regular 3% peroxide with a small amount of success and combined with the engraver found a few things, but not as well as I would like. So I store the matrix away until I could find a better solution. Flash forward to now in my new prep room and some 12% food grade peroxide and I get results I like. The 12% really breaks down some matrix. Word of warning though I measured temps of 167.4 Fahrenheit so if you chose this method be sure to use containers that are good with cooking temps (old food grade containers are what I use).
Anyway low and behold I believe I have found a mandible. But it broke on me as I was picking it up with tweezers. What do you think?
And this is the starter matrix.
Thanks for your help.

In 2006, University of South Florida student Mike Meyer found the beads during a summer project in the field, working with Florida Museum of Natural History invertebrate paleontology collections Director Roger Portell.
Very Interesting!

To Rumi: Thanks for the ID of the elphidium ...The specimen in the last post was the largest I came across, it was about 1.5mm, all the rest are well less than 1mm. Are these smaller ones in this post of the same species?
Thanks....

Found in Atco formation in Texas, Coniacian age. Looking in my Welton Farish book and I can’t find anything similar. Maybe spines of some sort? Kind of looks like teeth and kind of not. Lost on this one. Scale is in mm.

Found this digging through my micro gravel. It comes from the late Cretaceous, bottom of the Austin chalk, top of Eagle ford, Atco formation area. It is 3mm in length and I would say 1ish in width. Internal mold of something, crustacean maybe? Really not sure.

Rainy day today, so here are a few of my micro finds. Mostly they are from Post Oak Creek, a few from the North Sulphur River, and a few from a location somewhere between the bottom of the Eagle Ford and top of the Woodbine. All are late Cretaceous and all are microscope pics, either 10x or 60x. Sorry some do not have any objects for scale.
A piece of coprolite from the North Sulphur River with some fish verts, possible Ptychodus tooth, and mystery shiny stuff:

found in gravel from Brazos river here in west Houston
it appears to be a very tiny claw but will let the more experienced determine
also there is what appears to be a small bone also took a pic of it with micro scope camera.
I guess another possibility could be a tiny tooth?

G'day everyone!
I have become increasingly interested in finding conodont fossils and have found a locality near where I live that is rich in paleozoic vertebrate micro fossils, including conodont teeth. The locality is apart of the Coopers Creek Limestone formation, early Devonian in age and rich in carbonate. I have checked out this locality before and the rock is very, very hard (It has no layering and takes a few hard hits from a hammer to smash the rocks open). My question is what is the best way to dissolve these rocks and once dissolved what should I do next to find the micro fossils? I have read some where that hard rocks are soaked in kerosene for 24 hours to break them down but I don't really think it would be safe to use kerosoene and also expensive to buy enough kerosene to soak the rocks.
Here is a link to a paper on the site: http://paleoitalia.org/media/u/archives/28___Basden_1999_BSPI_37_527-541.pdf
Thanks,
Dan

Hello, I'm 12 years old and my name is Kenan S. I think I have found a new species inside a Tabulate Coral! There seems to be tiny bivalves inside of the coral after I split the coral in half. Wherever the growths are there is a cavity in the coral missing from the region. Also something new to my notes on this coral is that it grows hexagons (like any Tabulate coral) but over each other, but when the 'parasite' eats at the coral it does not grow over the spot or just makes a couple new polyps like any other coral (I own a couple living corals in my 75 gal) it kills the surrounding couple polyps, and creates a new area of polyps. I put this find under this category because of how small the parasitic creatures are. I can barely see them with my own eyes and my microscope is currently broken so that's that.

Hello all,
As part of my dissertation I have been sifting for micro-fossils using Braiser's (1980) white spirt method. The samples have yielded a range of micro-fossils, most of which I have been able to identify. However, this has stumped me.
I believe it to be a tooth/toothplate from a fish, the enamel texture is similar to tooth textures I have seen before, though I cannot identify the species or if it is one. Any help or advice with this would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers,
Jacob.

Hi all.
Only one of my first few posts on here as I'm primarily a collector. However, this would tie two of my hobbies together. Microscopy and fossils!
I've gone through the pinned articles on prepping, cleaning, etc. The one thing I'm still not clear on is retrieval of the matrix as easy as digging a shovel full of dirt, running it through sieves, sorting, and hunting?
I'm currently living in Biloxi, MS, so I assume I'll need to travel an hour or two to get out of the marine deposit area that is constantly in and out.
Thanks so much!
-C

I recently started poking around in a few different microfossil matrix packs & have been having fun... aching neck & back, but fun. Anywho, I just started with some from the Winchell fm out of Brownwood Texas, Pennsylvanian period. Listed as having crinoid stems (check), Fusilinids (check) & coral (check). I found a tiny little thing that looked like an odd shaped agate, sort of pinkish yellow in color, then a 2nd, 3rd.. I've found 8 of them so far, in just the 1st 2 teaspoons of matrix (I've got 8 oz of it). Just slightly over a mm in size. I'm thinking fish teeth, but not sure. Found this other thing that I'm not sure on as well. 1/2 cm in length & looks like a mini saw blade (sort of). I'm including a couple pics of it as well. All 3 pis are at 50x magnification.

Micro fossils from the pecan gap right where it meets Austin chalk, shark teeth with the roots dissolved are common here, as are baculites, if you see something you know or want to know more about say.

Creek was a little flooded today made it harder to navigate, started the day with 2 dead drill battery's that I had charged the night before so I decided to move father up to look at some different exposures, started by picking up some matrix for micro's from the bottom of the pecan gap, more on that later, and then some Del Rio clay for the same, (if someone has suggestions for how to wash this faster that would be great) spent the next 2 hours picking up heteromorph mariellas.

Here's another one I found in the "Cookie Cutter Creek" matrix I got from a Fla member - so no other age/location info is available. Looks like vert, but from what I don't know. My initial guess is a small mammal thoracic vertebrae, but I might be way off base with that. It might not even be mammal but maybe reptile or fish? Hopefully someone will share their thoughts and knowledge on this one. (Should I have posted this in the Micro section instead of here? Moderators please help.) Sorry for the poor quality pics but I took them with a "point and shoot" camera, held by hand to the eyepiece of my microscope; and the specimen is also very fragile, so I wanted to minimize handling. The first pic is for scale only -- scale is 1mm. Thanks for looking.

Debris, including micro glass "beads" from melted earth ejected into the air, from the KT boundary burn layer.
Garfield county, Montana, Hell Creek formation.
Late cretaceous (duh)
*i added "misc." to this album because this didn't fit anywhere, and I thought it was really cool and should definitely be included somewhere.
**There could even be vaporized dinosaur material as part of the glass and melted debris included. There definitely was plenty of it, but I guess realistically, unless it became evenly spread into the atmosphere and airborne debris, this is too small an amount of ejecta, and by percentage such a minuscule amount of vaporized dino, so sadly there probably isn't any.

These guys are interesting. One I'm positive is a tooth tip, one might be a worm...all I got. Lol first one I *think* is a tooth. 3 shots of it. 2nd one I dunno, but looks toothy. 2 shots. 3rd one is tooth tip, no clue from what. 1 shot. 4th one the tip broke off. No idea, mineral or fossil? 3 shots, larger piece, tip, then flip side of them together. 5th one no clue, 2 shots. 6th worm? 2 shots. Lastly, coral or bryozoan? 2 shots. My new microscope is getting quite the workout! SW Florida, Tamiami formation. Thanks in advance. Btw, they're all on a cm strip. These guys are dinkier than dinky.

My first go at fossil hunting in this miniature media. I got some fantastic Micro matrix form Shark tooth Hill off the man himself @caldigger. The matrix is from the famous fossil localiton at Sierra Nevada foothills outside Bakersfield, California. Full of tiny teeth at some unknown to me surprises. Any ideas of the missing IDs please let me know.